


tele(m)pathy

by natalunasans



Series: Fellow Adventurers [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka
Genre: Ableism, Androids, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Complicated Relationships, Cyborgs, Developing Relationship, Dysfunctional Relationships, Empathy, Engineering, Gen, Humor, Life Partners, Long-Term Relationship(s), M/M, Mental Anguish, Mind Manipulation, Nonbinary Character, Other, Robot Feels, Science Experiments, Telepathy, consensual robotics, non-consensual robotics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 20:35:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4194012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natalunasans/pseuds/natalunasans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the Master wants to make the Doctor understand what has gone wrong between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [halorvic](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=halorvic).



> because of [[[this picture](http://halorvic.tumblr.com/post/104433487149/)]] which made me wonder about:  
> (1) their different expressions  
> (2) how would be a telepathic link with an android  
> (3) why the Master found his situation in SotS undignified and distressful.

“What’s it like?” The Doctor had often wondered, but had never asked.  It probably wasn't a good idea even now.

“Are you _quite_ certain you want to know?” The Master’s eyes were no warmer than one would expect from tiny holographic displays with cameras for pupils.  Mesmerising to others, machine-cold to their designer.  But there was something about the way the silicone ‘skin’ creased at the corners of his mouth and the lids lowered over the eyemech: behind his usual mocking glance, concern.  Perhaps they couldn't handle the full reality of what they’d done; he wanted to protect them _almost_ as much as he wanted to make them understand.

The Doctor shrugged elegantly, but with apprehension in their sunken blue-grey eyes.

The Master reached one leather-gloved hand behind the Doctor’s head and pulled them into psychic contact.  The gesture was neither rough nor particularly gentle, intimate only in its matter-of-factness.  A soft clunk and hardly time to notice how his forehead surface felt almost as natural to the touch as their own.  They spent a mere nanospan admiring the brilliant job they’d done interfacing the electrodes under the ‘skin’ with an ersatz telepathic lobe they’d had to construct almost from scratch. The mental connection felt very nearly the same as it would be —as it had been— with another biological Gallifreyan.  

They settled into his mind, the more accessible parts as familiar as the rooms in the TARDIS that the two often shared, but this time the Master withdrew some barriers, letting them further inside than usual.  The Doctor allowed the Master to nudge them away from the more presentable areas of his mind, continuing on past places they’d rather not have seen.  

Apart from a great many terrible memories and shockingly —but unsurprisingly— few regrets, they found an overwhelming sense of unease.  Even the magnificent processor the Doctor had pieced together to house the Master’s consciousness was no match for his leaping imagination.  

The Doctor was reminded of the time they’d watched someone repotting a plant that had been kept too long in a too-small container. You could see that the roots had grown and multiplied to painfully fill every contour of the pot.

After all this time, the organic shapes of the Master's thoughts clashed and bruised themselves against the metal parts and machine language of the robot brain that contained them, pinched and cut their tendrils ragged on sharp wires, circuits, and code.  Back here, overheated connections gave the lie to the cool silicone front.

The Doctor’s mind reached out, soft with sudden compassion, but the Master’s consciousness shrank from their touch.

They’d thought the brain was good enough; not just adequate, but good enough _for him_.  They hadn’t realised it would hurt… And in all this time he’d never told them.  They suddenly regretted including the capacity for mental pain and went so far as to wonder if _deleting_ those feelings would have been a valid solution.

========

The Master's curiosity caught a little of this thought process; the Doctor could be careless about shielding when they started thinking too fast. He knew that it hadn’t been possible for them to ask his preferences while building the body, but even now, as they leapt from one assumption to the other, they still weren't asking.  

Fed up with the the singularly unuseful emotions leaking past the Doctor’s mental barriers, he shooed their mind back out of his inner self.  It was bad enough in here without all that.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The Master sidled up in front of the Doctor, with his back to them.  They made a questioning gesture, and he caught their hands and brought them into contact with his temples.  It was a dance move without music, though any excitement was of the more scientific variety.

The only electricity between them at the moment was the Master’s dual battery pack (located near where his hearts would have been), which the Doctor’s electromagnetic sense felt loudly through his back and their chest.  It was still strange to them not to hear the double heartbeat of a bivascular body, but they’d used an awfully efficient motor so that he didn't need to swap out and charge batteries very often.  Any attempt to preserve the symbolic rhythm would have cancelled out that convenience with an unnecessary power drain.

The Doctor didn’t see the point of keeping the link open, as there wasn’t much unshielded thought being let through at the moment.  They acquiesced to this whole charade, partly out of curiosity, although they imagined it wasn’t going to get any more pleasant the more they learned, but mostly out of a sense of duty.  They’d kept him alive this way, so anything that happened to him while he was like this... well, it was their responsibility, wasn't it?

“That, don’t you see, is part of the problem.”  

Blast it all, they’d forgotten to shield those thoughts.  But what exactly had he meant?

Before they had time to either find out or do any damage control, he was leading them up the ramp to the TARDIS door.  It vaguely occurred to them to break the telepathic connection and take him by the shoulders, but he'd clamped his hands over theirs, pinning them to the sides of his head.  The smaller but physically stronger cyborg hurried forwards, and the Doctor stumbled after him.

“No!  Master, you really don’t want to do this!”

“Oh, but I _do_.”

He elbowed open the TARDIS door and stepped out onto what passed for grass on this planet.  At the same time he flooded the Doctor’s mind with his. They were calculating _together_ how far the TARDIS force field stretched; in tandem, they were able to intuit native Gallifreyan technology so well that they could practically see the bubble she had around them. The Doctor felt the Master's consciousness nearly as close as their own, all their shared and unshared memories and impressions intertwined... even (or perhaps especially) in disagreement and danger, it was so warm and comforting not to be alone inside one's own head.  They barely remembered to shield this thought, and wondered briefly if the Master were thinking (and shielding) the same.

As the two sped towards the edge of the bubble, elements of the Master's mind fell away from the Doctor's reach; first a few fragments, then more and more, faster and faster.  But this wasn't the Master placing shields or barriers.  He was vanishing piecemeal, like a person in a dream that melts when you try to touch them.

Engrossed by their combined curiosity, the Doctor no longer considered stopping the experiment by force and didn't even notice when the Master let go of their hands. They watched the machine part of his brain struggling to process data, with whole chunks of his mind missing.  The two of them were playing chicken with the Master's soul and it appeared to be an all-or-nothing game.  The whole of himself was being stretched like so much silly putty, and if they went too far, schloonk!  His whole consciousness would be sucked (out of the plastic egg?) back into the potential black hole whence it had been extracted, and the Doctor would be left gripping the temples of a lifeless robot.  The impending emptiness gaped just ahead, and the Master's unshielded thoughts grew uncharacteristically incoherent as the mind holding them slipped away.

They weren’t sure who halted first, just before it was too late.  The Doctor's hearts were pounding loud enough for both, and the Master's motors and processors overheated from a strain they had not been designed for.  With the Doctor's hands still on the Master's temples, the two linked figures edged carefully back towards the TARDIS.  The Master's stretched consciousness came zinging back in, shocked itself on the ill-fitting circuitry, and scrabbled about like an animal caught in a box.  When it settled, the mind was almost like it had been before.

The Doctor watched as the Master expertly put his very self back together. His inner voice was only a little shaky, after something that should have left him even more thoroughly rattled than they were for having witnessed it. The Doctor had simply accepted the TARDIS’ calculations regarding the limitations of the android body, but apparently the Master hadn’t.  They imagined how many times he must have carried out this experiment unaccompanied, with different variables but horrifyingly similar results, and they ached with the loneliness of his failures.

"I think that's enough for today, don't you, Doctor?"  The Master must have known that the element of surprise had won him the upper hand for now, but there was something other than triumph in his voice as he finally disengaged the Doctor's fingers from his head.

The Doctor watched him walk back to the TARDIS, his gait _almost_ as even and confident as he was trying for. If they hadn't known him so well, they'd have been fooled.  Just before reaching the door he stumbled, narrowly averting a fall, and grasped at his head.

They looked away quickly, pretending not to have seen.  They told themself that he’d finish recovering his mind in the safety of the ship, and they preferred to spare him the indignity of further scrutiny.  The Doctor turned to the world outside the force field, and soon their long strides were taking them to meet the day's other adventures.

Saving the world was ever so much easier, after all, than saving the Master.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

When the Doctor returned to the TARDIS, alien diplomacy concluded without too much fuss for once, they were greeted by the quiet hum of the sentient ship... all seemed calm, but that _other_ sentient machine was nowhere to be seen.  

It just wasn’t the same coming home to an empty control room with no one to tell their stories to, and suddenly they felt an exhaustion they'd not noticed before.  The Doctor slumped down in one of the armchairs, glad to sink their bony frame into soft leather and be almost swallowed up by the upholstery.

On the table nearby were a decanter and a glass, which they considered vaguely for a while before concluding that an intoxicant, even if they willed it to take effect, wasn't going to help. Only then, contrarily, did they pour out a few fingers of the vaguely phosphorescent purplish liquid, but thoughts distracted them and they fell asleep staring into the untouched drink.  They dreamt of animatronic sheep; first one, then many.  One by one, the sheep started to spin.  As each one slowed and came to a stop, the dreamer saw that they had turned into Daleks.  A front panel on each armoured pepperpot swung open to reveal – instead of the usual one-eyed, tentacled, sentient glop – an assortment of the Master’s previous faces staring quizzically at them.

"That was a passable vintage of Quoironian liquor; what a pity to let it go flat!"  The Master's voice startled the Doctor awake; they knocked over the glass, spilling the drink all down the front of their suit. The Master was himself again, standing over them with his accustomed snark and the self-assured (and very awake) presence of one who never needed sleep, not even once a week.

The Doctor grumbled something about getting cleaned or changed and made to get up, but the Master had already produced a tea towel as if by magic, and was expertly dabbing at the spill.  He leant over the Doctor in a way that would have been suggestive if things hadn't become so distant between the two of them lately. He was practically on top of them, practically in their pockets... Oh.

Just as the Doctor woke up properly, and with them their nostalgia for how things used to be, they realised the Master had picked their pocket and pinched the remote.

Perched on the chair arm, he reached across them, leant in again and made contact with the Doctor's forehead, pinning them in the chair. The rush of a companion mind back into their draughty brain was so welcome that the Doctor didn't struggle. They could tell, now —he was letting them feel it all— how much he’d missed this, too. The cozy fellowship of simply not being alone in the universe of one's own skull.  The Doctor was relaxing into it, revelling in it, even as they tried to understand what the game was. Scenes from their common memory, flashed-through with a significance that they hadn't been able to intuit at the time, began to hint at what had gone wrong between the two of them—

Then it all went blank.

The Master's mind disappeared from theirs, leaving an unspeakable emptiness.  His body slumped lifeless on top of theirs, echoing the dead space in their mind.  In their horror, it took the Doctor a few moments to realise that the Master had taken the remote simply _to deactivate himself while telepathically linked with them_.

They didn't try to move him, just lay there for a little while, thinking.  The unresponsive android body weighted them down, its torso cooling quickly as the main motors lay inactive.  After a time, they fumbled about for the hands and recovered the remote.  They steeled themself for it and turned the power back on.  As the Master's consciousness rushed back into contact, they watched his mind pick up just where he'd left off.  His inner gaze darted around what he could see of the Doctor's thoughts, seeking any signal with which to orient himself to what he'd missed, any handhold to regain control.  They wondered stupidly if it was like this every time.  Of course it was.

The Master had missed half an hour of what was meant to be a two-sided conversation. In the meantime the Doctor had argued with themself, and the Master had won.

The Doctor shoved him out of their mind and spoke, their voice dull with what might have been sadness, anger, or just disuse: "Let me up, I've got to get changed."

The Master made no objection; he didn't even crack a dry joke as he righted himself, smoothed a few wrinkles out of his suit, and made a slightly overdramatic ‘step this way’ gesture.

The Doctor stalked off and disappeared for the rest of the day.

 


	4. Chapter 4

The Master entered some coordinates and flipped a few switches, and the TARDIS carried them into the safety of the Vortex, where the measurement of time didn’t matter.  

There was an odd noise, though, so he removed his gloves to better manipulate some delicate part of the machinery.  These small repairs were as good a way as any to keep himself occupied.  Even without measuring time, he noted how many bits of troubleshooting he had done before he saw the Doctor again.

They hadn’t changed their clothes, which was probably for the best. In addition to the spilled liquid, their suit was rumpled and showed traces of flux, as well as metal and plastic filings where they’d wiped their hands and tools while working.  Their eyes had been rubbed red and the circles under them seemed deeper than ever.  

The Doctor held out a device with both hands: a symbolic offering.  Their long fingers shook a little, but that might have been just Vortex turbulence.

==========

"Here, this is yours.  I’ve added functionality, if you’ll just look at this dial." The whole situation felt so awkward that they fell into the automatic speech patterns of not-quite-explaining technology to strangers.

The Master obliged, and the Doctor wondered if he had guessed; the spark of emotion that transmitted when their hands touched was suspiciously like gratitude.  

The remote control’s deactivation setting now had an automatic reactivation timer which could be set anywhere from a few nanospans to eighteen hours, a nod to the time systems of the home planet.  As with commercialised androids, there were some settings to adjust other aspects of the body, so far unused, that the Master could examine later in the privacy of his room.  He carefully closed the protective flap and pocketed the device.  

It could of course have been a trick of the light, but he almost appeared to stand even straighter than usual, though not much taller.

The Doctor knew that the Master was already contemplating all the possible ways to use this gesture of trust against them; that was the way the game worked.

==========

The Master knew that the Doctor would have set aside enough components to make a second remote control with override capabilities.  For all he knew, the device could already be in one of their voluminous pockets, but he suspected that it only existed in their common strategic imagination.  

He chided himself for even vaguely feeling that he’d _almost_ like to throw his arms around the Doctor and thank them… just for _temporarily_ relieving him of one _small_ part of a manifold indignity.  Of course he did no such preposterous thing.

“Very _decent_ of you,” he said instead, with a small smile.  “Don’t suppose you’d like that drink now?”

He’d found by experimentation that the stuff that Quoironians got drunk on didn’t short out his circuitry, and the Doctor liked it as much as Terran alcohol, so they tended to keep some on hand as one thing that both their bodies could share.

==========

After the Doctor had downed two portions of the glowing purple stuff, they found themself possessed of a slightly less expansive vocabulary, but rather more inclination to use it.  

“I never had the right,” they said.  

  
The Master made a gesture that wasn’t a disagreement.

“Your life… is yours.”

The Master got up and walked to the door, opened it, and made as if to step out (the TARDIS’ force field was smaller in the Vortex, extending maybe a metre outside her walls).  “Is it, my dear Doctor? Is it _really_?”  The same words in his usual tone might have referred to his bitterness at being trapped.  Now, though, there was a softness in his voice that neither of them had heard in ages.

The Doctor swallowed, cleared their throat, and pretended to change the subject.  “Look, I was thinking… I’m a passable engineer, but you’re a bloody superb one.  I don’t want to sound Mondasian, but… What if we had a go at… _upgrading_ your processors?  Together?  What d’you say?” The Master had always been their toughest audience, and the Doctor worried that the Cyberman joke would fall flat, or that it had perhaps been unnecessarily cruel.

The Master closed the ship’s front door carefully and took his time walking back to the parlour area. Before sitting down, he topped up both their glasses, his hand brushing against the Doctor’s as he poured theirs.  A flicker of something they’d both almost forgotten passed between them.  Something hopeful.

“The two of us, making a brain together... What could _possibly_ go wrong?"

**Author's Note:**

> thanks @timelordsandkittens, @charamei & @romanadvoratrelundamngirl for beta!


End file.
